French word of the day

My (French) car started coming up with a weird error message the day after its annual service:

PLIP BATTERY SPENT

I had no idea what it meant and groaned inwardly that it started happening the day after a service.

Was PLIP an acronym for something weird hidden within the car?

A quick google to find out what it means takes me down a linguistic voyage of discovery.

Apparently, un plip is the onomatopoeic French word for remote key fob. Makes the English word seem staid by comparison.

Unhelpfully the car’s manual suggests that the replacement size of battery is one that doesn’t appear to exist – CR0523?? For now I will resort to using the spare key – a bit of a novelty given this is the first car I’ve ever owned that has a spare key!

If you google CR0523 you’ll find a lot of Citroen and Renault drivers complaining about the same thing. It sounds as if, if you open the plip, you’ll find the battery will tell you what type it is and there’s a good chance it’ll be a cr1620.

Great new word – Plip!
Did you hear that Hugh Laurie spontaneously invented a word while filming, which also perfectly describes the object in question? Its SPOFFLE – for the large furry thing they put over the microphones while filming. Those things which occasionally drift into shot when they shouldn’t.